


no sound, no hallelujahs

by Chrome



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cold War, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Cold War, Hanukkah, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Immigration & Emigration, Jewish Character, Jewish Mila Babicheva, Jewish Victor Nikiforov, Jewish Yakov Feltsman, Jewish Yuri Plisetsky, Judaism, Languages, Long-Haired Victor Nikiforov, M/M, MK Ultra, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Torture, Yuuri is a PhD Candidate, discussion of the Holocaust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 01:42:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15208094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Viktor was the most American of all of them. It was not enough to save him.The year is 1959. Yuuri Katsuki wants to do the right thing. Viktor Nikiforov wants to go home.





	no sound, no hallelujahs

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal love to the amazing [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor), who got a lot of texts that began with phrases like I HAD A TERRIBLE THOUGHT, and to the best beta in the world, [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar).
> 
> This was written as a series of prompt fills for the first bonus round of SportsFest 2018, most particularly in response to [this prompt](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/7464.html?thread=425256#cmt425256). It has since been compiled and edited. Therefore, I also owe thanks to Team Viktuuri at SportsFest for cheering me on and being supportive of the fact I produced 6.5k but somehow only filled three prompts. Thanks, guys.
> 
> The title is from [On The Train Ride Home by The Paper Kites.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQFP1rG7wg)
> 
> Finally, please do mind the tags; there's a lot in here and History Is Terrible.

Viktor was good at English. It wasn’t so surprising; he’d been thirteen years old when he’d walked through Ellis Island at Yakov’s shoulder, his hand in Mila’s, Yuri still little enough to be carried on his hip to prevent him from wandering off. He’d been cute then. He’d been less cute when he grew up, when he spit curses in Russian and Yiddish instead of using his English. Viktor had given up bitterness, when Mila preferred to gossip with the other Jewish girls, when Yuri refused to use English at home even though he’d practically grown up with it. Viktor was the eldest and so he was the one who fought his mother tongue, who stumbled his way through broken sentences in immigration, and then at the doctor’s, and at the boarding house where they stayed and then the apartment they rented. He recited the sentences to enroll them all in school over and over again into the surface of the frozen pond that first winter, and the week after Christmas he went to the office and only had to ask them to repeat themselves once and didn’t drop a single ‘the’.

When he filled out the form with his birthday, she let out a little gasp. “Why, is it really?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re born on Christmas, honey. That’s real lucky.”

Viktor wasn’t used to American pet names yet, but he knew what honey was and he figured it was a good thing, that she thought he was a sweet kid. So he didn’t say, we don’t celebrate Christmas, we’re Soviet and also we’re Jewish. He smiled at her. “I guess it is!”

Viktor became good at English, and he became good at that smile.

He tried to coax Yuri into practicing with him, particularly as they got older, but even though Yuri never learned to read and write in Russian, only four years old that first spring in New York, he never lost the thick accent. Viktor smoothed out his consonants, added contractions, chatted with their neighbors and got a card at the big public library. Yuri rolled his eyes. Mila flirted with the Jewish boys in Yiddish. Viktor assimilated.

None of them, not Yakov, not Mila, not Yuri at his most contrary, would have argued that Viktor was the most American of all of them.

It was not, he realized the day when the men in dark suits came to their house, enough to save him.

Viktor had been confused, and then afraid. Yuri had been angry and afraid all at once. Mila had hushed him and gone stone-faced. When Viktor realized what they wanted, when they asked him questions about bombs, about plots, about Stalin in sharp, perfect English, the kind Viktor would never have for all he tried, he went quiet and pale and looked at Yakov, who stared back and understood nothing but understood perfectly.

When they handcuffed him, Viktor turned to Yiddish, to Yakov, _“Yakov, I didn’t do anything, I promise, I—”_

 _“I know, Vitya,”_ Yakov said. _“Do what you have to and come back to us.”_

 _“I’ll come home,”_ Viktor promised as they pulled him out the door.

He was not sure, anymore, how long ago that had been. It was time enough for his fingernails to grow long, long enough that he scratched himself sometimes when he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. Long enough for his long hair to start to mat, even if he finger-combed it whenever he had the presence of mind.

Long enough for him to rarely have presence of mind.

They were drugging him. They were open about it, which didn’t help the terrible distortion of reality as much as he might have hoped. At what he thought was two weeks in, in the dead of night, he pried a tiny screw out from the bench in the cell. He’d had wild hopes then, still half-high from the previous day. He’d imagined picking the lock, escaping, waking up from this like it was a terrible dream. But by dawn all he had was a tiny screw in his hand, smaller than a fingernail.

It was no lockpick, but during the worst trips he pinched it between thumb and forefinger, reveling in the pain of the edges digging in, thinking _this is real, this is real._

It was after one of those terrible nights that he first met the Japanese man. Viktor was in the observation room, screw in his hand, hunched in on himself. He’d combed his hair, he thought, but it was tangled again. And then the man.

He came in like the others, dark suit, notebook, but he gave Viktor an odd little nervous smile and Viktor was so afraid and so alone that he did what he’d given up on days—weeks? decades?—ago and he begged.

“Please,” he said. “Please, I want to go home.”

He had kept smiling, a little confused, but indulgent. “Of course, you’ll go home soon.”

Viktor had stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

“We appreciate your participation,” he said, “And obviously you can’t go when it’s still in your system, but—”

“They don’t—they don’t let me leave,” Viktor said, faintly. “You don’t understand.”

“Have you had a bad reaction to LSD before?” the man asked.

Then another man had come and pulled the Japanese man away. “He’s not a volunteer, Katsuki,” he said, “And he’s not CIA. He’s a spy.”

“A spy!” The man—Katsuki—stared at him.

Viktor shook his head. “I’m not, I’m not, I want to go home,” he begged. “Please.”

“I thought,” Katsuki said, still in English, and now Viktor could hear it—the faintest hint of an accent. “They were volunteers.”

“Don’t feel bad for spies,” the man said, and led him out.

Viktor woke the next morning with the screw still pinched in his fingers, crusted in dried blood. That night he prayed in Hebrew, a foreign tongue but utterly familiar. _Yura, I’m sorry. Mila, I’m sorry. Yakov, I’m sorry. I told you I’d come home._

The next morning, the Japanese man was back.

“I’m Yuuri,” he told Viktor. There was something soft about his r’s and Viktor clung to it when he spoke. “What’s your name?”

“Viktor Nikiforov.”

“Where are you from?” Yuuri said softly.

“New York,” Viktor said. “Please. I have—they’re my cousins, really, but they’re like a brother and sister.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said. “Shh. I’m going to help you, you need to trust me.”

Viktor wanted to say, how could I? But he had no choice, and the way Yuuri looked at him, the way he’d spoken like he’d really thought Viktor had chosen this, the way that English was so obviously not quite his native tongue, made Viktor believe he could.

“I will,” Viktor said, “I trust you. Please help me.”

Yuuri had nodded, a little grim-faced, and then he had gone and not come back. A night turned into a day turned into what might have been a week, and Viktor thought he had dreamed the whole thing until the night that Yuuri came back.

He opened the door quietly with the key, and then he winced under Viktor’s gaze, seeing his pupils blown wide.

“Are you high?” Yuuri asked, faintly.

“They drug me every day,” Viktor said. The world shifted, unsettling and warping around him. “It’s—fading, now. It’s been hours.”

“Hours,” Yuuri echoed. “Can you walk?”

The truth was that Viktor’s legs felt like jelly beneath him, that it felt like the floor bucked and rolled like an ocean, but to get out of there, Viktor would do anything. He looked at his hands and realized they were shaking. “Yes,” he said.

Yuuri slipped Viktor’s arm over his shoulder to help keep him steady. He led him to a small blue car, American-made, and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders in the front seat when he saw him shiver. The landscape was vast and grassy.

“Where are we?” Viktor said.

“Pennsylvania,” Yuuri said. “You said you’re from New York? I’ll take you home. I can’t drive all that way but we can take the train from Philadelphia.”

“What about you?” Viktor asked.

Yuuri shrugged. “I resigned last week. I told them I was afraid of Soviet spies.”

“I’m not a spy,” said Viktor.

“I know,” said Yuuri. “But they won’t ever think I was the one who helped you.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a psych student,” Yuuri said. “I’m getting my PhD. They asked me to help with these experiments with LSD, but—they told me it was all volunteers.”

“It isn’t,” Viktor said, softly.

“I know that now,” said Yuuri, and hit the gas.

To the rumble of the car engine and the crackle of the radio, perpetually just out of tune on a pop station, Viktor slept on the highway to Philadelphia. When he woke, the world had come back into focus, the drugs working their way out of his system. The tremor in his hand remained, and something told him it might never leave him.

\---

Viktor wished he could sleep again, but they were drawing into the city by the time he woke and he couldn’t justify shutting his eyes and curling up. Still, he couldn’t form the words to speak to Yuuri for a long time. They sat in awkward silence. It had begun to rain. Viktor watched the droplets spill down the windows as the sun set, glinting through the water and the buildings.

When he did speak, it was without thinking. “You have the same name as my little brother.”

Yuuri looked over at him, startled. “Really?”

“Yes. Well, a little different. The vowel in his is shorter. But Yuri, yes.” He paused. “He’s not really my brother.”

“Your cousin, you said,” Yuuri prompted.

“Yes,” Viktor said. “Yakov doesn’t have any children. Our mothers were his sisters. And then there’s Mila.”

“Who’s Mila?”

“My sister,” Viktor said, “But Yakov’s cousin’s child, I think. Or the child of his cousin’s child.”

“How did—” Yuuri shook his head. “That’s a rude question, I think.”

“How did he end up with us?” Viktor asked. “Not so rude, no. Yura was being raised by his grandfather and things were difficult, and Yakov had a chance to come to America and Yura was so little, he asked if he could take him. It is not so uncommon. Many died in the war.”

“How old are you?” Yuuri asked.

“Twenty-four,” Viktor said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” Yuuri said. “How old were you when you came to America?”

“Thirteen,” Viktor said. “I remember very well, because I’d just come of age.”

Yuuri laughed. “Thirteen is still young!”

“Ah,” Viktor said. “It’s a tradition, not a statement.”

“In Russia?”

“In Judaism,” Viktor said.

“Nikiforov,” Yuuri said. “That isn’t a Jewish name.”

“No,” Viktor said. “My father was not Jewish. But my mother was, and so I am a Jew.”

Yuuri nodded.

“How old were you?” Viktor asked.

“What?” Yuuri blinked. “How did you know?”

“English is not your first language,” Viktor said.

“No,” Yuuri said. “I was a child. My parents came here not long before the war. I thought my English was good, though.”

“Very good,” said Viktor. “Better than mine, certainly. You can hear it just a little in your voice.”

Yuuri sighed. “I can never quite lose the accent.”

“I like it,” Viktor said. “It made me think I could trust you.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri said. “For trusting me.”

“Thank you for saving me,” Viktor replied.

They fell into quiet again after that, except for the rattle of the rain against the car, but it was a comfortable lull rather than a tense silence. Viktor leaned against the window and enjoyed the cool glass against his temple. Yuuri drove, occasionally glancing over at Viktor.

“Do—” Yuuri broke off and cleared his throat.

“What?” Viktor asked.

“Do—is it common, for people to have hair as long as you?”

Viktor laughed, surprised.

Yuuri flushed. “I meant—I’ve never been to Russia!”

Viktor smiled and shook his head. “I wasn’t teasing. It’s just—no, it’s not common. But I’ve grown it out since I was ten or so. It never felt right to cut it. But I’ll have to, now.

Yuuri made a turn a little sharper than necessary. “What? Why!”

“Ahh, look,” Viktor tried to run his fingers through it and winced. “It’s matted. I don’t know how often they let me shower, but there wasn’t always soap, and the water was cold so it never got properly clean even when I was capable of caring for it. Easier to cut it than try to get a comb through it.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispered. “That’s—I’m so sorry.”

Viktor shrugged. “There are worse things.”

Yuuri slammed his fist into the dashboard, suddenly. “But it’s not right!”

“No,” Viktor said. “But few things are, in this world.”

“I guess not,” Yuuri said, and his voice wobbled a little when he said it. “I—” he cut off.

Viktor waited a moment for Yuuri to resume speaking, and then he looked over. At first he thought it was a trick of the rain, the light through the windshield casting odd shadows, but no—the streaks on Yuuri’s face were tears.

“Oh,” Viktor said. “Well, don’t cry.”

Yuuri let out a choked laugh. “That’s not what you’re supposed to do when someone cries!”

“What are you supposed to do?” Viktor asked. “Should I kiss you?”

“No!” Yuuri said. “Just—tell me it will be alright.”

“It will be alright,” Viktor said.

“You don’t believe that,” Yuuri said.

Viktor glanced down at his hands. “I want to,” he said after a moment. “I want to.”

They were quiet again the rest of the way to the station. Viktor didn’t have a chance to hesitate over his empty pockets, because Yuuri was at the window buying tickets before he could even compel his legs to move forward. He hunched forward instead, letting his ragged hair hang over his face and avoiding the eyes of the other people waiting for trains. He stared at the newspapers instead and felt a shock at the date. November, already. Two months he’d been gone. It felt like a bad dream.

He stared at the pavement instead, the type-print burning in his mind, until Yuuri strode back over.

“Here,” Yuuri said, and handed him the ticket.

“Thank you,” Viktor said, folding his fingers around the stiff paper. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me!” Yuuri said it a little too loud, but he caught himself and went quiet for the next part. “I worked for them and—they did this to you. I did this to you. I’m responsible.”

“You’re not,” Viktor said, “You’re not. Yuuri, you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” Yuuri said. “That is what most people said during the war, isn’t it? I didn’t know.”

“I suppose it is,” said Viktor. “But very few people who said so truly did not know—and none of them gave up their positions to save a baker, so I do not think you have anything to be sorry for.”

“You’re a baker?”

“Yes,” Viktor said. “I work at a deli.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said. “That’s not—I mean, I didn’t expect that.”

“I’m the oldest,” Viktor said, “And my uncle is getting older, not that he’ll admit it. Mila, she works too, now, at a factory, at least until she marries and maybe after that if they don’t have children right away. Yura is young yet. I want to send him to school.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said. “I’m lucky, I guess. My parents—we never had a lot of money, but they had enough for me to go to college. They own a restaurant. My parents do, I mean. And my sister Mari works too.”

Viktor nodded. “You’re the youngest.”

“Yes?” Yuuri said. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all,” Viktor said. “But your family, they’ve tried to give you everything.” He held up a hand at Yuuri’s expression. “It is a good thing. We try the same for Yura.” He realized, belatedly, that his accent had worsened, and he took a moment to compose himself. “Which platform?”

“Eight,” Yuuri said, after a startled pause at the subject change.

“We don’t want to miss it.”

Viktor was eager to get back to New York. Part of it was the keen sense of longing for home that he’d never quite lost, but had come back with an incredibly acuteness the longer he was out of that facility, the clearer his mind became. He missed his family. The other part was that no one would look twice at him in New York, as shabby as his clothes had become, as matted as his hair was. New York was the city of strange things that did not make eye contact. But in Philadelphia, people stared.

Yuuri seemed to sense his unease, and he stepped between Viktor and the others in line on the platform. Viktor felt a rush of affection; whatever he might say, Yuuri was kind.

On the train, Viktor sat at the window and Yuuri on the aisle. He tried to stay awake, but the lateness of the hour and his own weakness let him be swept up by the movement of the train. He gave into it quickly and drifted off.

When he woke, his head was on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor said, pulling away, and Yuuri shook his head.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” Viktor repeated, quietly, and he leaned his head against Yuuri’s shoulder again.

“Did you want to be a baker?” Yuuri asked quietly.

“Not always,” said Viktor. “I daydreamed a lot as a child. And when I was very young, I skated.”

“Skated?”

“Figure skating,” Viktor said. “The Neva freezes in the winter, and when I was very young I would go out and skate as soon as the sun was up until it set. In the winter that is not very long,” he smiled. “But I was a fast learner.”

“What happened?” Yuuri asked.

“The war,” Viktor said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You should stop apologizing for things you are too young to remember,” Viktor said.

“I remember the war,” Yuuri objected. “Don’t you?”

“In a way,” Viktor said. “In a way, I do.”

His eyes were distant enough that Yuuri didn’t press. Instead he let them go quiet again.

“Where do you study?” Viktor asked, suddenly.

“Oh,” Yuuri said. “Columbia.”

“You’re smart, then,” Viktor said.

“I—I guess?” Yuuri sounded a little flustered but there was an edge to his voice, like he couldn’t decide whether to be offended. “Did you think I wasn’t?”

“Of course not,” Viktor said. “If you were smart, you would have left me there.”

“They were hurting you,” Yuuri said, as sharply as he could while still keeping his voice hushed. “I couldn’t have.”

“See,” Viktor said. “But the smart thing to do would be to leave me. It would have been safer.”

“It would have been cruel,” Yuuri said.

“Ah,” Viktor said. “Such was my mistake.”

“What’s that?”

“I thought that you must not be very smart,” Viktor said. “But perhaps you are and you are just more kind.”

“I don’t think so,” Yuuri said. “I think I did what a decent person would have done.”

“Then the world,” Viktor said, “Has very few decent people, Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri sighed, so quiet it was almost lost in the rumble of the train. “I know.”

It was still night when the train pulled into Grand Central. Yuuri had only a small valise; Viktor had nothing at all, and they stood a moment on the platform when they tumbled out with the rest of the crowd, looking at each other.

“It’s late,” Yuuri said, “I should—call a cab.”

“Wait,” Viktor said. “Do you have a pen?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said, bemused.

“Give it here,” Viktor said. Yuuri fished in his bag and brought it out. Viktor took it, and then took his hand, and carefully printed an address on the back of his hand.

“You shouldn’t need it,” he said. “I’ll come to Columbia and see you. But just in case.”

“Just in case,” Yuuri said, and stared at it, like Viktor had somehow imprinted something incredible into his skin instead of a string of numbers and a street name. “Do you—you could come with me, if you need a place to stay? It’s late.”

“I know,” Viktor said. “But I’ve been away a while. I think it’s high time I went home.”

“Of course,” Yuuri said. “Be safe, Viktor.”

“Be careful,” Viktor said. “I’ll see you, Yuuri Katsuki.”

They parted reluctantly, something keeping their eyes on each other even as they stepped away. It felt like magnetism to Viktor, and perhaps it was the drugs, the long months he had suffered, so that any friendly face would have felt like an angel’s. Perhaps it was something about the warmth in Yuuri’s eyes, how he let Viktor, skinny and filthy and drawing stares, lean on him like it was no concern at all. Or the edge to his voice, the unusual note that told Viktor he might, just might, understand.

He watched Yuuri and saw Yuuri watching back through his glasses until the crowd came between them and he was gone. Even at night the station was packed, but the streets were quieter, dimly lit. It had been months but New York was his home, and guided by the streetlamps and the numbered signs and the part of his heart that had lay under the pavement here all the time he was gone, he traced his way back to his home.

The apartment block was as stark as he remembered; Mila was a lazy housekeeper, and she hardly bothered to sweep the front walk, let alone plant flowers or do anything to make the exterior less dreary. Yakov and Yuri, of course, were hardly inventive. But as he walked, he stumbled a step; in the window was a menorah, burned out.

November. Of course. It had been that long, he had known it, but still it was a shock. It was late enough that it must have been burned out for hours, the candles dripping down to nothing from sunset, through dinner, out before bedtime. When he was younger, Viktor would sit and watch them sometimes, watch the wax dwindle away.

He stumbled up the steps. He had no keys, but up in the eaves he found the spare, tucked carefully out of sight. It took a moment of fumbling and knowing exactly where to look, but then it was in his hand.

It felt odd and heavy in his grip after so long, like his own home had become unfamiliar. He was struck with a sudden fear that everything he knew and loved would be gone, taken away just as easily as he had been.

He slid it into the lock and felt something in his heart skip when it turned.

Inside, his fears melted away like the wax. The interior was familiar: Yakov’s coat and hat on the peg by the door, Yura’s muddy boots tipped on their sides in the entry. He inhaled the smell of potatoes and oil. He hadn’t been hungry all during the journey, but he was suddenly starving.  
He stripped off his boots and went first to the window to count the nubs of wax in the menorah. Yura would pick it out in the morning, but for now he could count four. The fourth night.

Then he went into the kitchen. The tile was cold through his stockings, but Yakov would kill him if he tracked mud on the neatly-swept floor. There was applesauce in the refrigerator and he took it out, half-considering making latkes but instead cutting a slice from the challah on the counter and spreading it on.

He hadn’t bothered to turn a light on, so he couldn’t see properly when he heard footsteps, but then he heard Mila’s voice.

“Yura, Yakov’s gonna kill you if you’re cooking in the middle of the night again, it drove him crazy when Vitya did it and at least that was edible,” she said in a hushed voice that still somehow carried across the room. Then she flicked on the light and gasped.

“I’m afraid we’re not being so ambitious as cooking,” Viktor said, licking the applesauce from the spoon.

She hurled herself across the kitchen; he set the bread down and caught her, wrapping his arms around her. He picked her up and spun her around; for half of a terrible moment he was afraid he no longer could before he tightened his grip and lifted her off the ground and it came back like muscle memory.

“You’ve gotten heavy,” he teased, setting her back on her feet.

“You’ve gotten light,” she said, reproachful, and picked up the bread and applesauce and handed it to him. “Eat.”

“I was trying,” he protested, but took a bite.

Footsteps stomped down the hall. Viktor hid a grin behind the bread as Yuri stormed in and snapped in Russian, _“You’re such a hypocrite, Mila!”_

“Ahh, but her English has gotten so much better than yours,” said Viktor.

Yuri stared. For a moment, Viktor had accomplished what he’d failed to do since Yuri was five years old: he’d managed to make him shut up. Then Yuri snarled, “You bastard!”

“Oh, English,” Viktor said brightly. “Amazing.”

Yuri flung himself across the kitchen much as Mila had; Viktor hugged him. Yuri hugged back and then went to punch him in the shoulder, felt how frail he was and apparently thought better of it, because the humming ball of vitriol was reduced to a snarled, “You look like shit.”

“I know,” said Viktor. “You’ll cut my hair for me, won’t you, Mila?”

Mila gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look. “You can’t cut it!”

“I can’t keep it like this,” Viktor said. He pet Yuri’s hair. It had gotten a little long, curling around his face. “Growing yours out?”

“No,” Yuri snapped.

 _“What in God’s name—”_ Yakov stepped into the kitchen and looked at them. Mila had the spoon in her hand and was eating applesauce from the jar; Viktor had one arm around Yura and the challah in his other hand. Yura was clutching him like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hug him or shake him violently.

“ _Shalom_ , Yakov,” Viktor said.

Yakov looked at him and then back through the doorway of the kitchen to the front window, the menorah silhouetted against the light from the street. “And people say there are no miracles anymore,” he said, and went to the stove and turned it on. “Sit down, Vitya. We can do better than that.”

Yuri released him and Viktor sat. The wood grain of the table was familiar under his fingers and he felt something settle in himself, like a part of his heart that had curled up and gone to sleep in order to survive was waking from hibernation, unthawing somehow in his chest.

He felt like a child again, utterly exhausted but willing to surrender to the warmth around him. Yakov cooked and Mila and Yuri bickered, and Viktor’s rejoinders came slower until he was silent amongst the chatter, watching his family and not saying a word.

\---

Yakov looked at Viktor as he ate. Viktor saw his gaze and gave him a reassuring smile, spearing the potatoes on his fork. Yakov didn’t stop frowning, but said nothing, so Viktor continued to silently shovel potatoes in his mouth until Mila said, “You’ve gotten quiet.”

Viktor shrugged. Yakov’s frown deepened. He let Viktor scrape the last of his food off the plate with the side of his fork and then said, “Bed, I think.”

Viktor nodded and stood, going to the bathroom. He turned on the tap and stared into the mirror, only faintly recognizing the person staring back. He tore his gaze from his reflection to wash his face and his hands, scrubbing all the way up to his elbows, relishing the warmth of the water. When he finished, he looked back at the mirror to see Yakov standing in the doorway, watching him.

Viktor tried to smile, but the face in the mirror only produced a grimace.

“What can I do?” Yakov asked in a low voice.

Viktor shrugged. He met his own gaze to avoid Yakov’s, studying his tangled hair in the mirror, heavy where it clumped together.

Yakov sighed. “In the morning,” he said quietly, “Will you talk to me?”

Viktor nodded stiffly. Yakov rested a hand on his arm for a moment and then let go. Viktor managed what he hoped was a real smile before he turned and went down the hall to bed, but even if he succeeded, it didn’t erase the worry in Yakov’s eyes.

The next morning the world was heavy, blurred. His head ached. He felt more than heard footsteps coming into the room, the sensation rather than true awareness of someone standing over him. There were voices, distant as though he was underwater; Yakov’s hand against his forehead, Yura resting his elbows on the side of the bed, Mila holding a glass to his lips.

The passage of time lost all meaning—it was all ache and blur, the heavy close of his eyes and the nightmarish tumble, in his dreams, back in time.

\---

Yuuri knew that it was probably unreasonable to be worried after three days of silence. Viktor’s promise to come find him at Columbia hadn’t come with a deadline, and after all that time away, he surely had many things to take care of that would prevent him from trekking across town. He had a family to see; a little brother (cousin) who shared Yuuri’s name.

Still, by the second evening since he had left Viktor at the train station, watching the crowd come between them like the tide rushing in, Yuuri was worried. The third evening found him in a cab, reading the address Viktor had given him to a taxi driver from a sheet of notebook paper where he’d copied it from the back of his hand as soon as he arrived home.

There was a menorah in the window. The whole neighborhood was Jewish, so it told Yuuri nothing, but he was nonetheless reassured that he’d found his way to the right place.

He wore a soft cream sweater and brown slacks and his glasses, conscious of what a stranger on the doorstep would signal to a family who had so recently had one of their sons ripped away from them. He was not an intimidating person, but a few extra steps towards appearing nonthreatening could do no harm.

He rang the bell and waited. After a moment, a blond teenager opened the door and snarled something at him in Russian.

“I’m here to see Viktor,” he tried, in English.

The boy tried to slam the door in his face.

“Wait!” Yuuri said. “You must be Yuri!”

The teenager stared at him. “So?”

“I’m a friend,” Yuuri said, lifting his hands in a placating position. “Viktor—he gave me this address.”

Yuri made a noise in his throat that said he didn’t quite believe that. “How do you know him, then? I’ve never seen you around here before.”

“I go to Columbia,” Yuuri said. “We met—in Pennsylvania. I—I brought Viktor back here.”

Yuri’s face warped into anger and horror. “You’re one of them!”

“No!” Yuuri stumbled back. “I mean, I worked with them, but not once I knew! Not anymore. I couldn’t leave him there after I saw.”

“You saw what?” a new voice said, harsh and guttural. An older man made his way to the door and said something in Russian to Yuri.

Yuri spat something in Russian back and Yuuri raised his hands. “I—I came to see Viktor. I can—he gave me this address. I was worried.”

The man turned to him. “When?”

“The night we came back to New York,” Yuuri said. “At the station, he,” he fumbled in his pocket and produced the paper. “He wrote it on my hand. He—I thought he was going to come to see me, but he didn’t, and I—worried.”

The older man’s face softened. “I am Yakov Feltsman,” he said shortly. “I raised Vitya after the war. Yura.”

"What?" Yuri snapped.

"Go check on Vitya."

Yuri scowled, but went, casting a suspicious look back at Yuuri.

“Vitya,” Yuuri said, his voice lifting in uncertainty.

“Viktor,” Yakov said.

“Viktor. He said that. That you took him in after his parents died.”

Yakov nodded stiffly. “My sister and her husband died in the camps.”

“In the—” Yuuri stumbled. “Concentration camps?”

“Yes,” Yakov said. “I suppose he would not have said. You did not know we were Jewish?”

“No, I knew, but I don’t know. I didn’t think about it,” Yuuri said quietly. “He must have been so young.”

“Very young,” Yakov said. “Mila younger. And Yura hardly born.”

“Is he alright?” Yuuri asked.

“He is ill,” Yakov said, flatly. “Shock, exhaustion, the doctor says. He has a fever and so he remembers things he usually does not.”

“No,” Yuuri said, softly.

“He will be alright,” Yakov said after a moment of looking Yuuri up and down and apparently judging him to be sincere. “He is talking, at least.”

“He—he talked to me a lot,” Yuuri said, confused. “He told me about all of you.”

“He told you nothing about the war,” Yakov said. “Yes?”

“No,” Yuuri said. “I don’t think so. He said you came here after.”

“After the war,” Yakov said, “When the camps were freed, no one knew where their family was. The whole continent, it was—ruined. Everyone had lost someone and there were so many dead their names were lost. There were lists posted, ads in newspapers, everyone wanting answers and no one with any. Do you understand?”

“I—” Yuuri said. “I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure why Yakov was telling him this. All he wanted to see Viktor, to be able to reassure himself that he was all right.

“It took me half a year of looking,” Yakov said in that same flat tone. “My sisters, both dead. I did not know Yuratchka existed until I saw him. He was born a month before the Americans came. He was half a year old then and Vitya carried him everywhere. Vitya’s hair had turned that grey. I did not believe it was him until I got up close. They told me, he is so quiet, he says nothing at all. I thought—our Vitya, never. But.” Yakov shook his head. “Yura remembers nothing. Vitya, he says he remembers very little. And of course his voice has come back.”

Yakov looked at him the whole time he spoke, and when he finished Yuuri understood: however Viktor talked around it, whatever he did or did not remember, everyone in this family had walked through hell, and the echoes of it still lived here. Everything Viktor had said in the car, on the train, was coming back.

Yuuri was distantly aware that he’d gone pale, but he’d made up his mind. If he was honest with himself, he’d made up his mind a long time ago, when Viktor had looked at him in that room with those red-rimmed blue eyes and begged to go home. “Can I see him?”

Yakov hesitated. Before he could answer, they were interrupted by a young redheaded woman coming down the hall, followed closely by Yuri.

“He’s awake,” she announced, and then looked at Yuuri. “Who are you?”

“A kidnapper,” Yuri said.

“A friend of Viktor’s,” Yuuri said.

She studied him, then brightened. “You’re Yuuri!”

“I’m Yuri,” said Yuri. “What are you on about, hag?”

“No, Viktor’s Yuuri,” Mila said. “He told me about you!”

“My name is Yuri!” Yuri said. “His name can’t be Yuri!”

“It’s Yuuri,” Yuuri said. “I think it might be spelled differently.”

Yuri looked at him with something like horror.

“He is awake?” Yakov asked, cutting through the chaos. Mila nodded and he sighed. “Go see Vitya,” he told Yuuri.

Yuuri didn’t need to be told twice and headed down the hall. The room at the end of it was small, closer to a closet than a room. There were two beds in it, but only one was occupied. Viktor struggled to sit up when he heard footsteps, and brightened when he saw Yuuri.

“You’re here!” he sounded delighted.

“You gave me your address,” Yuuri said. “I was worried when you didn’t come see me.” He took the few steps necessary to bring himself to the side of the bed. “Your—Mr. Feltsman said you were sick.”

Viktor made a dismissive gesture. “Better now,” he said, although from up close his pallor was even more evident. “The fever is gone, anyway.”

Yuuri’s hand couldn’t help but go to Viktor’s hair. It felt like silk under his fingers, especially compared to how coarse it had been a few days earlier. Now it was smooth and shone like sheet metal. “You didn’t cut it.”

“No,” Viktor said. “When I was ill, Mila, she combed it all out. I think I asked her to cut it that first night and she didn’t want to.”

“It’s beautiful,” Yuuri said. “I can see why she wouldn’t.”

“That, and,” Viktor said, “I haven’t cut it for a long time.”

“Since you were ten,” Yuuri remembered. “The color.”

Viktor smiled ruefully. “Yakov told you, I suppose. Yes. It was dark when I was a child.”

“Do you—remember?”

“Not really,” Viktor said. “I remember before the war perhaps as well as you remember anything when you are very young. Bits and pieces. I remember my parents. And after that—I remember holding Yura when he was first born. I remember afterwards. I truly do not remember the war very well. I think it is a blessing,” he concluded.

Yuuri nodded, carefully. “The drug they gave you,” he said quietly. “It can—you can have flashbacks, sometimes. Even years after. Not physical withdrawal like with others, but—mentally, it can… be bad,” he ended, lamely.

But Viktor nodded, eyes serious. “Thank you for telling me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Yuuri.

“Do not apologize for what you have not caused,” Viktor said. “Yuuri. You saved me, and I will forever be grateful for that.”

Yuuri touched his hair again, unable to help himself. Viktor shifted, and Yuuri found his hand on Viktor’s cheek, cupping his face.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri said again, and to his horror realized he was crying. He drew his other hand to his face and tried to catch the tears. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, this time for the fact he was sobbing.

“Come here,” Viktor said, and when he pulled Yuuri onto the bed and into his arms, he went willingly.

“It will be alright,” Viktor said into his ear, his breath warm against Yuuri’s neck.

“Do you believe that?” Yuuri asked.

“It’s Hanukkah,” Viktor said. Yuuri blinked at the non-sequitur, but Viktor rubbed his back and continued. “The story you will have heard, maybe, it is about oil that burned for eight nights when it should have only lasted one. But the real story, it is that Judaism was banned and the Second Temple, it was desecrated. And the Jews banded together and fought back, and took back the temple and rededicated it to our God. And the candles we light, they are the candles that were lit in that temple to reconsecrate that altar. This, it is not just about miracles. It is about enduring. Eventually, always, we will rebuild the temple. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Yuuri said. “Yes. I do.”

“Good,” Viktor said. “Do you believe it?”

“Yes,” said Yuuri, and in that moment in Viktor’s arms, he meant it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you can! They mean a lot.


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